Gaze A Gazer's Stare
by wallflower1
Summary: Alpha is remade, Topher is rebroken. AU for Epitaph 2.


**Title:** Gazed A Gazer's Stare

**Summery:** Alpha is remade, Topher is rebroken. AU for E2.

**AN:** Beta'd by the most wonderful beta in the world, denelian. Title taken from a David Bowie song, but most of you are probably more familiar with the Kurt Cobain cover. Song in section seven is "All Along The Watchtower', another song where the cover is more famous then the original.

* * *

Pause. Inhale.

Exhale. Focus. Focus on the dusty floor beneath him. On his fingers laced underneath his head.

Wait. For Alpha to be wiped away. Pause. Inhale. Block out the voice's death cry, their clamoring platitudes and useless pleading . They are all going to die, and he will be remade new.

Exhale. The building trembled around him like a earthquake, dozens of window panes shattering high above him.

Pause. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. The voices were quite, he was quiet.

Inhale. Pause. Did it work? The voices are gone, but he, Alpha that was created and created again, remains. Exhale. _He remembered._ Remembered painting tiny fishes, his name, over and over. Remembered trisecting Whiskey's face with a few strokes. Remembered the wet give of his handler's eyes under his thumb. Remembered his (their) horror as Los Angles burned.

He remembered a broken boy he passed upon the stairs.

Grabbing his coat draped over a lone office chair, and the envelope with KWK in huge letters across the top, he ran.

* * *

Like a false winter, the air was heavy with flakes of ash and curled paper, the floor dusted with shards of glass that crunched under his boots as he approached the body, crumbled by the Memory Wall.

He knelt down, placing his hand on the back of his head. One of him was a priest, and knew the Lord's Prayer in five languages. but Father Duncan was gone, and Alpha believed only in the divinity of man.

Words are sure as a blade in his hand, both wielded with precision.

He was without words.

A picture, Adelle and Dom with their heads cocked and their hands touching, stirred back and forth in the breeze. Back and forth and back and forth like a breath.

Topher's breath.

Oh shit. The boy was alive.

* * *

It took the better part of an hour, but he carried Topher down to the ground floor.

Setting Topher down on the floor, Alpha looked for something to open the elevator with. As he pried open the elevator shaft with a piece of twisted metal, he heard so many voices coming from the lobby, overlapping one another. One voice cut over them all, and he laughed to himself. Ever the shepherd indeed, with her loyal hound to match.

Slinging Topher over his shoulder, he climbed down. Above him, indecipherable chatter faded into nothing more then a murmur.

The chair was still there, one wedge sticking out of the slot. Good, she got his gift.

Passing through the office, he laid Topher out on the couch and checked his pulse. Steady. On impulse, he stroked Topher's hair, brushing away grit and glass.

Crossing the room to stand at the top of the stairs. Victor, Priya and the redhead all had their guns trained on him.

"It's only me." he said, hands up.

"Which one?" Priya asked.

"Just Alpha."

"It didn't work" the redhead sighed.

Leaning against the banister, Alpha said, "No, it think it worked. In fact, I know it worked. Just..."

"Cleaned house but didn't call the owner back." Echo walked around the triad to stand at the foot of the stairs, a thoughtful slant to her mouth.

"How does it feel?"

He shrugged his shoulders as if he had carried his people there. "Quiet. Light." Empty. Strange. They were his companions for so long. Later he may morn them. Not now.

"More pressing, Topher is alive. Possibly concussed, but alive." Echo asked with her eyes; he replied with a tip of his head, towards the imprint room. Echo was running past him in a heartbeat.

"Remind me, how many doctors do you have?"

"Three. And a nurse."

He had five. Well, six if you counted Moran, who was a doctor in name only. The redhead rolled back to the doctor's office while Priya followed Echo.

* * *

Over the next few days Victor and T destroyed the imprint chair and the servers with manic glee. The last thing slated to be dismembered was the brain mapping equipment. Standing before the illuminated screen, Alpha and Echo examined Topher's brain, investigating why he remained unresponsive three days later.

Echo tapped the keyboard, zooming in on one section of Topher's brain.

"The best thing we can do for his cerebral contusion is to let it heal. As long as we monitor the swelling in his frontal cortex here and _here_," Echo hit the keyboard and highlighted the two areas red, "his brain should be fine. Or as fine as someone with severe PTSD can be."

"The meds should have reduced the swelling enough for him to regain consciousness hours ago. I'm concerned. He could wake up and have no idea who he is, or think it's 2008."

She sighed, one more key cleared the screen. "That could be a good thing. Would explain why he won't wake up. If it's easier in his head then out here, he may not want out."

They both knew what a lie that was. Topher's brain hadn't been a happy place in years.

* * *

The silence, it turned out, wasn't intolerable. Finding his inner calm was easier without so many others clamoring for attention in his head and he had plenty of time to meditate now.

Though, times like these, as Echo made her move, he felt the loss of the incredible knowledge, onice available to him from fifty complete people.

Echo set out her tiles. "Z-Y-G-O-T-E and with my triple word score puts me—"

"At all of our asses kicked." Mag said, tipping her tiles over in disgust. Moran had a doctorate in modern literature, utterly useless in almost every situation Alpha found himself in, accept for games of Scrabble and occasionally impressing pretty brunettes with poetry.

"We could play monopoly," Kilo said tapping her finger against her import hubs.

"I say no. Last time we played we couldn't agree on the rules." Alpha said, clearing the board. "I have a deck of cards." Harold Parcell was a professional gambler, before the schizophrenia, and Harold spent the most time in the forefront of Alpha's brain.

"Between you and Echo, still sounds like I'm going to get my ass kicked." Mag said. She was right, beside him, the only other person who could beat Echo at cards was Adelle. He kind of missed Adelle. Course she and Dom were probably making up for lost time.

"I can't help that I'm—" Whatever she was about to compare herself to was lost as Topher began to wail. He and Echo were up and across the floor in an instant. In the doctor's office, Topher sat straight up clutching the blanket to his chest.

"Topher, Topher, you're safe. You're safe Topher." Echo had her hand out and her voice pitched low, like he was a skittish colt. Topher's eyes darted from Echo to him and back again, scooting back against the bed.

"Topher, it's going to be alright." Alpha said, two steps behind Echo. Did he know where he was, and with whom? It was hard to tell, Topher's cognizant abilities had been patchy at best for years.

Echo got close enough to touch his calf, he jumped a little, but the screaming tapered off to pained keen. Alpha followed her lead with gentles touching and low cooing. By the time Alpha had a hand on his shoulder, Topher was only whimpering. Over Topher's bent head, Alpha and Echo shared a look.

"Topher," Alpha said. "Look at me. Do you know where you are?"

Pale eyes starred into his. Slowly, he nodded his head.

"Hell," Topher whispered, and began to cry.

* * *

Ballard, of all people, discovered early on that singing to Topher could lull him during his bad days.

"N_o reason to get excited... the thief he kindly spoke...there are many here among us who think life is but a joke..._"

A few Doll habits remained in him and Echo, even with all the personalities. The ability to discuss food for hours. The never-ending drive to do their best.

A high comfort level of group showers.

"_But you and I we've been through that... and this is not our fate... let us not talk falsely now...he hour's getting late..._"

As the last result, when singing, reading and psychotropic drugs didn't do the trick, Adelle would bathe Topher by hand, an arduous task at Safe Haven. Not so in the Dollhouse.

Standing behind him, Alpha couldn't see if Topher was still crying, but his trembling stopped. Squeezing more shampoo in his hands, Alpha scrubbed Topher's scalp, washing around the tender wounds there.

"_All along the watchtower..._"

* * *

Topher resembled a Doll, passively drying off and dressing himself in the soft Active wear Alpha gave him.

"Shave and a haircut will have to wait, until another day." He didn't think this trust extended to activities with razors.

Topher plucked at the hem of his shirt. "Bed time?"

"If you'd like. Are you hungry?" Topher shook his head.

"Want to sleep in your bed tonight?" Topher nodded, grabbing his hand and pulling him along.

They passed the main floor, where someone found the Monopoly board.

"We own that. Pay up" Victor said, as T held out his hand.

"Just wait until you get to Park Place, then we'll see who's smug." Echo handed T the paper money, who counted it out loud.

"Park Place, who need's Park Place when we own all of one side of the board?" Victor grinned at T.

"For now," Echo said, twisting around to watch them, "Blue skies?"

"Blue skies," Alpha said as Topher pulled him along to the pod room.

Alpha had been sleeping in the pods on the other side of the house, leaving Topher's shrine to madness undisturbed. He watched as Topher climbed into the pod and pulled the blanket over his head.

"Better?" he asked, stepping over the stacks of books.

Topher nodded, sliding down in his pod.

"Want me to stay with you?" Alpha asked.

Topher shook his head. "It worked, didn't it? I made...things better?"

Alpha crouched down, so Topher could see him over the edge of the pod. "Yes, you did."

"Thank you," Topher whispered, curling up and closing his eyes.

Alpha waited until Topher's breathing evened out, a steady in and out, before he turned and quietly walked away.

His multitudes were gone. Alpha that was created and created again, remained. Who better to help a broken and re-broken man then him?


End file.
